Be It Ever So Humble

Tags

British Columbia, friends, home, moving, Nova Scotia, travel

I had a new experience this year, while “home” for Christmas in Nova Scotia.

…I missed home.

West Coast home.

…Things have changed.

While I spent my early childhood in Ontario and the Caribbean before settling in Nova Scotia, the Maritimes were always “home” to me.

I loved my home town and my university fiercely, and I have made many, many, many posts about how much I miss it, and how much I love the close-knit culture of the East Coast. Perfect Husband, who grew up on the South Shore, feels the same.

It used to be that whenever we traveled back to Nova Scotia, we would be hyper-vigilant to change: That store moved to a different location! That other store is gone! Someone repainted that house! They put in a STOP SIGN!

Things change all the time, slowly, but when you’re only home once every year or two you see them all at once, and it feels like you have entered some sort of strange parallel universe where everything looks slightly wrong.

Perfect Husband especially would get indignant about changes made to his neighbourhood back home (which is the sort of neighbourhood where people look out the windows and wonder “who is that?” when they see an unfamiliar car).  It hurt him to see developers come in and destroy his old stomping grounds and built large vacation homes on top. It hurt more when one of the wealthy retirees who moved into those houses called the home where he and his four siblings grew up a “quaint little cottage”.

That was his home, and it has been largely plowed over and rebuilt, and he resents it.

But we have come to accept over the years that Nova Scotia is not our personal museum, and now it has gotten to the point where I am surprised by what hasn’t changed after all this time: The local convenience store is still there, with the same sign. My favourite Pita Place, still going strong. The neighbourhood houses which seem to have used the exact same Christmas lights for the past twenty years.

The changes no longer faze me. I have accepted that life goes on. I’m just delighted by what stays the same.

Nova Scotia has also emptied itself. Most of my friends have evacuated in search of jobs that suit their education level. Of the remaining old friends and relatives, I only saw a couple. Traveling was challenging for us with two kids in tow, and they didn’t have the time or inclination to travel to see us. They were all busy with their own lives and kids during the holidays and I am just not relevant to those lives any longer.

It isn’t their fault, it’s mine – I’m the one who left. Besides, with Facebook I can still chat with them and see pictures of them and their families, so maybe the need to see each other in person is less urgent because of that.

Really, I was touched by the couple of people who did take time out of their day to meet up with me when I was passing through their region. The holidays are a busy time, and the weather was not always great. So it meant a lot to me when they did.

Nova Scotia just… doesn’t belong to me any more, and it doesn’t miss me or need me. I felt strangely superfluous on this visit, except among immediate family.

Meanwhile, BC has been growing on me slowly for a long time. It took me years to start putting down real roots, and up to a few years ago I desperately missed Nova Scotia and wanted to go home.

But I finally built a strong support network of friends. Besides, the mountains and the cherry blossoms get to you over time, and I have started to take pride in the beauty.

I loved the look on my Mother In Law’s face on her first week staying with us last year, when she saw crocuses coming up. Just small trips around town had her amazed.

“I went to the grocery store and they had FLOWERS on display outside!”

“…isn’t that normal?”

“Carol, it’s JANUARY!”

“Wait until you see the fruit and vegetable market. It doesn’t have walls.”

And when my parents came out, they kept taking pictures of daffodils while their friends back home sent them photos of snow piles up past their shoulders.

It made me proud, because BC is starting to feel like it is mine.

 

 

I love the early spring, and the long, dry, but not-too-hot summers. I love the snow on the mountains, and the mix of skin colours, languages, cultures and cuisines all around us.

So, while I cherished every day of our time with the family, and I ate a lot of pitas, it also felt really good to come home. I missed our bed, our bathroom, and even our cluttered, toy-laden living room and minuscule kitchen.

It’s not perfect, but it’s ours.

And I kept getting texts from my friends here, asking when they could see me, now that I was finally back… back home.

Saying Goodbye To Old Times

Tags

Alzheimer's, Christmas, family, home, Nova Scotia, time, traditions

Our Christmas home in Nova Scotia felt sort of… final, to me, this year.

We plan to spend next Christmas here in BC because it is expensive to travel during the holidays, and it makes a stressful time just that much more stressful. Our next trip to Nova Scotia will probably be during the summer when more people will be free to get together with us, and travel is safer and cheaper.

Although the snow was certainly a thrilling novelty to Owl.

My father’s Alzheimer’s is slowly progressing. He still knows who everyone is, and what is going on, but he is frail, and quiet, and easily confused. My mother has to help him shower, get dressed, and she puts him down to bed for naps and at bed time like a child.

But he’s still Dad.

If and when we spend another Christmas in Nova Scotia, the person that I know as my father may have faded away entirely.

Christmas was always a big deal in our house. Both my parents love Christmas, and we used to have all sorts of traditions built up around it. The annual tree decorating was so idyllic that my high school friends used to attend it too, because it was just such a Christmassy THING.

But many of the traditions have fallen by the wayside one by one what with my commitments to Perfect Husband’s family, and my father’s illness, and the fact simply that time is moving on and things change.

We did still decorate the tree this year. Mum needed PH to help bring the tree in and get it set up. The last time we were home, Dad could still do that. He still sat and watched us decorate while he sipped egg nog, but once upon a time he would have been the one pouring the drinks and sloshing too much rum into everyone’s nog.

The decorators this year were mostly Mum and Owl, with me alternately helping, taking photos, and watching the baby. It was the same, but not the same, at the same time.

If that makes sense.

Meanwhile, the Christmas Eve traditions on PH’s side of the family are going to be changing soon, too. Their Christmas Eve family gathering had the same food, the same schedule, but less exuberance. My nieces and nephews are older now. The next youngest to Owl is already ten years old, and most of them are young adults in university and beyond.

Our kids were definitely the hit of the show.

We got a family photo of all of the “kids”, including Fritter, on the front steps. We don’t know when another group photo will be able to be taken as the grown “kids” start moving away and living their own lives.

I’m really glad we made it home this Christmas, because I felt like I was getting a chance to say goodbye to these old traditions and accept that things are changing.

Owl got to experience and explore these “old times”, and I got to make my peace with their passing.

And these changes don’t have to feel bad. But they will be different.

Maybe that is okay. Maybe it is time for us to build our own traditions, here, at home.

In Which A Mysterious Disease Eats Months of My Life

Tags

illness, jaundice, liver, mysterious disease, new brunswick, Nova Scotia, rash, reunion, toenails falling off, vacation, virus

No, I’m not dead.

I’ve been touched by the comments and tweets that I’ve gotten, asking after me. You’re right, my blog has been very silent.

You see, I contracted a mysterious disease.

…Let me backtrack a bit.

So, in April I was extremely overworked. On top of the 35 hours I pull at the vet clinic, my dog training business was going through one of its booms again and I was out training almost every night during the week, and for 3-6 hours each weekend day as well. So I was working around 50 hours a week spread over all 7 days of the week.

But I had something to look forward to – vacation!

My 10 year Mount Allison University reunion was going to be in early May and a bunch of old friends from residence were attending. PH and I had planned a full 10 days home in the Maritimes, and the highlight was going to be the reunion. PH would drive me up to Sackville, New Brunswick and have dinner with my old friends, some of whom he knew from his own days at Mount Allison. Then he would go visit with his family and leave me to stay in residence with the girls, reminiscing and eating and dancing, for two whole days.

I don’t know when I’ve been so excited. I loved my university days. I loved the town. I loved the school. I loved the people. And I was going back, and it was going to be AWESOME.

So I dragged myself through day after exhausting day, counting the sleeps until vacation.

Then, the day before we were due to leave, I collapsed at work.

Like, literally collapsed.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go (Fear of Change Says HELL NO)

Tags

anxiety, change, jobs, moving, Nova Scotia, transfers, Vancouver

PH and I have always talked about going back to Nova Scotia some day.

After all, we don’t like that our son is growing up away from his grandparents and all of his cousins.

We don’t like that he may not know all the words to “Barrett’s Privateers” before the age of ten.

We don’t like that he may not know a Halifax donair if it fell on his shoe.

Most of all, we just think of ourselves as Nova Scotians, so obviously, SOME day, we want to “go home”.

But in the future.

You know.

Like, not right now, but maybe some day.

Sometimes, when I get really frustrated with living in the city, or when homesick for old friends, or for my mother, I have wanted to go home RIGHT NOW.

But usually it’s… “maybe in a couple of years”.

So when a job came up in Nova Scotia that PH would be perfect for, we didn’t know what to think.

I mean, what, leave Vancouver?

No more mountains? No more sushi? What about Owl’s awesome daycare? What about our diaper service? What about all of our friends, whom we would leave behind?

And yet…

The job was in a perfect location. Just half an hour away from my parents, and a little over an hour to his parents.

And then we looked at housing prices and we just started SALIVATING.

2,000 square feet and an acre of land for half the price of our current 1,000 foot townhouse? NO PROBLEM.

So we made a pros and cons list. It looked like this:

• PRO
• close to family
• cheap houses
• VERY cheap houses
• close to Carol’s old friends/boy cousins
• same salary, lower cost of living
• Carol either doesn’t work or does dog training at home
• No daycare/Nana Daycare
• Have we mentioned the house pricing?
• Cause it’s cheap, you know
• Seriously, $70k for a three bedroom HOUSE
• not condo, HOUSE

• CON
• moving expenses? How cheap is PH’s company?
• Negative equity in house currently YAY GLOBAL RECESSION PLUS SCREW YOU MORONS
• No Happy Nappy 
• All of our Vancouver friends go byebye
• Daycare lady would be sad 😥
• No vet tech job for Carol, probably
• Carol would have to take up prostitution
• or dog training
• one or the other
• but probably prostitution

Ultimately, we realized that the universe was calling our bluff. When fortune just hands you the thing you’ve always said you wanted, you have to go for it. We’d be chicken not to.

So PH applied.

Well, it turns out he’s the best candidate by a country mile and they really want him.

What they aren’t sure of is whether they can afford to help us move out there.

What WE aren’t sure of is whether we can afford to sell our house right now, because the housing values are down and we don’t want to end up in a negative equity situation.

All of this is causing me massive anxiety because you KNOW how much I love uncertainty.

And change. Don’t forget my love of change.

I keep alternating between dreams of a big house and a dog-daycare that I run out of my own home, and joy at the thought of leaving my job… and complete panic at the thought of leaving all the people here, not least my awesome daycare lady who had gone above and beyond the call of duty for me and Owl.

I waver between excitement and terror.

I don’t want to go!

I don’t want to stay!

I want to go, I just also want to stay!

And then, the next morning, I woke up in a sweat and shook PH awake.

“I just realized. We CAN’T go to Nova Scotia.”

“Why not?” he mumbled into his pillow.

“THERE’S NO ANTON’S IN NOVA SCOTIA.”

A Taste of Nova Scotia

Tags

food, mclobster, Nova Scotia, signs, travel

I feel like these images really get the Nova Scotia flavour across…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Rime of the Ancient Maritimer

Tags

accents, humor, love, Maritimes, Nova Scotia, people, Stories, travel

It started out so normally.

There we were, in Tim Hortons, which could have been any Tim Hortons in Canada. But it wasn’t any Tim Hortons. No, we were in a NOVA SCOTIA SMALL TOWN Tim Hortons.

So I’m munching on my apple fritter and Babby is chewing on a piece of bread from my BLT, and he starts making eyes at the old lady sitting behind us, offering her his gummy bread.

Babby is a massive flirt with the ladies and it is his newest trick to entice them over to him by removing food from his mouth and holding it out to them with an alluring smile. They always laugh, and smile back at him, and politely decline the slimy lure, and he returns it to his mouth with a resigned expression.

This lady was no different from the others. I exchanged a smile with her as she gathered up the detritus from her meal and walked towards the garbage can, passing us on the way. She asked the usual questions (“how old is he?” “does he have any teeth yet?” “Is he a good sleeper?”) and I gave the usual answers (“nine months” “yes, two on the bottom,” and “oh hell, no”).

“Wall, he’s a reel sweetie-poi,” she said in a thick Maritime accent. I thanked her.

“Oi have to get to the hospital naow,” she said conversationally as she moved towards the garbage. “Moi nointey two year oald husband broke his hip.”

“Oh, no!” I said politely, “I hope he gets better soon.”

“Oh moi, yesh,” she said, “But Oi’m jest determined to get ‘im hoam. Oi sez to the docter, Oi sez, ‘jest yoo let me get ‘im hoam and Oi’ll be the best pill yoo ever had!”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Wall, Oi’m going to go an see him naow, and hopefully Oi’ll be bringin’ him hoam!” she said again.

“I hope you do.”

“Oi WILL bring him hoam! Oi’m determined!”

She came closer and said confidingly, “Y’see, the docter was concerned, becuz he wuz on some heart medicayshuns. But I tole ‘im, I sez, “those wuzn’t foar his HEART, they wuz becuz he gets angshus. Cuz of hiz job that he had long ago, roight? He gets roight angshus an’ his heart starts goin’ that fast, but it ain’t hiz heart, it’s the anxiety, roight? Becuz of hiz job…”

She set her plate and garbage down on my table and began to tell me her husband’s entire medical history in detail.

Her green eyes held mine as I sat and tried to listen, realizing she needed to tell someone, and for some reason, I was that someone.

Like a wedding guest in a Coleridge poem, I was destined to hear the entire tale.

And so the minutes ticked by as I was held hostage. It was difficult to maintain strict attention when I had a sandwich waiting to be eaten, in-laws expecting me at home, and a fussy Babby on my knee, but I did catch bits of the story.

“…and it wuz a pink pill,roight, like a salmon coloured pill, and it’s to slow daown the heart, only he had it cuz he wuz a foir-man fer so menny years, roight? And he would get roight tense, and he couldn’t breathe roight, and his heart would jest race, loik a panic attack, roight?”

“…So after the sergery the docter looks at his chart, and he seez that he wuz on this pill, and he sez ‘Oi didn’t know yer husband had a heart condishun’, only Oi sez ‘it wasn’t FOAR his heart…'”

“…so wen he woak up he didn’t know where he wuz, roight? He wuz scared. He thought maybe he wuz in a hospital after a foir, cuz he was a foir man for so menny years, so he panicked, roight? And he troid to cloimb right out of his bed, and he wuz jest owt a surgery, roight?”

“… an the docter, he sez he wuz lookin’ all arownd, and Oi sez, ‘yeah, he wuz lookin’ for me, see?”

“…So then Oi come in, and he seez me, and his arms go owt loik this, woid, loik a little boy holdin’ owt his arms to his mama…”

“…and they asked him if he knew where he wuz, and he sez ‘camping!” cuz we wuz supposed to go, roight, but then he broak his hip, and the RV new and everythin’…”

“…but he ain’t the same, with them new medicashuns hez on, he ain’t roight… Oi keep tellin’ the docter, ‘you let me bring ‘im hoam, and Oi’ll be the best pill yoo ever give ‘im!”

“I hope they send him home with you today,” I said, nodding. Finally, FINALLY, she gathered up her stuff again and put it in the trash. Then she told me,

“Oi’m going to get wun of them ramps bilt on the house, cuz he’ll have trubble getting up them steps fer a whoile. Of coarse, he’ll be a big baby when Oi bring ‘im hoam. Men always are,” she said with a twinkle.

“But Oi’ll get ‘im fixed up. We’ll go on that campin’ trip later this summer, Oi think!”

“I’m sure you will, and I hope he gets well soon,” I said, trying to break eye contact politely. She started to head toward the door.

“Don’t yoo be feedin’ that baby lettis,” she called from the doorway, pointing at Babby who was happily gumming some of my BLT, “Moi sister in law she give ‘er baby a piece a apple, an she near ’bout choked on a liddle bit of apple skin!”

…

Oh, Nova Scotia. I did miss you.

A vignette from small town Nova Scotia

Tags

home, Nova Scotia, small towns, travel, university towns

As I drive down the main drag, I fiddle with the radio, but am completely unable to find a station that is not playing country music. So I navigate the familiar road while a singer warbles

I took him honky-tonking and that was it,

he took to it like a pig to mud, cow to cud.

We all got a hillbilly bone down deep inside!

I park in a parking lot which is really a large mud patch and walk into the local Irish pub which, even though school is out, contains small groups of university students nursing microbrewery ales.

The waitress smiles and asks me if I’m waiting for my friends, referring to them by name.

As I sip a diet Pepsi, conversations spill over from the nearby tables. They are the sort of conversations that you find everywhere in a small university town, where beer, liberalism, and literature are rampant in equal proportions.

“Did you know that Stephen Colbert lost, like, half his family in a plane crash?”

“No! Really?”

“Yeah, he’s had a really rough life. Apparently…”

—

“Have you read Angels in America?”

“No, I keep meaning to, though.”

“It’s really good. It’s actually referenced in The Laramie Project, and…”

My friend arrives and former conversations from my last visit home are picked up seamlessly, as though no time has passed.

“So some one actually thought to tell those African women that diarrhea is a “hot” disease, and they need to give their children water to cool it. That made sense to them in a way that “dehydration” never did, so they actually did give their children more water, and fewer children died.”

“It’s interesting how language affects our perception of reality. The words for tomorrow and yesterday are the same in Hindi, so I actually tend to get those days confused…”

I’m home.

In Which I Threaten to Descend Upon The Maritimes With Murderous Robots In My Wake

Tags

bloggers, DoCo, Dooce, Nova Scotia, robots, travel, twitter

I’m going to be home in less than a month! 

Since Perfect Husband hasn’t been home for more than two or three days (at Christmas) in years, we’re taking a proper vacation in Nova Scotia. We’re going to catch up with old friends and relatives, make them all admire our baby while he spits up all over them, and then I’m going to dump water on his head.

I’m not religious, and PH is downright atheist, so a Christening seems a little odd, I know. But I believe in doing a naming ceremony for the baby. All cultures tend to have some form of tradition around naming the baby or welcoming him into the family, and in our culture, a Christening seems like the only way to do that. I wish we could just formally name him and welcome him to the family and eat cake without anyone trying to cleanse my child of inborn evil or dedicating his life to Christ, but that doesn’t appear to really be an option.

Plus, I think it’s important to my mother, who is the daughter of an Anglican minister.

In any case, I’m very excited to be going home. I am looking forward to seeing my friends, my family, and maybe taking Babby to Peggy’s Cove or my old university.

Among the many people I can't wait to see are my boy cousins, one of whom drew this awesome picture of my fur babbies

The extra-awesome thing is that the Halifax Meetup of Dooce Community members is totally happening while I’m home. I can’t wait to meet all of these bloggers. I hope they like me.

If anyone else wants to meet up with my while I’m in town, I’d love to schedule you in. Drop me an email or twitter or some such (I’d just like to point out that after all that pressure to join Twitter, I finally have and I only have 9 followers. I haven’t felt this much of a loser since I was one of the first people I knew on Facebook and wandered around going “hellooo? Is anyone else on here?”).

I’m leaving in midMay (since I don’t have the restriction of vacation time) and PH is joining me later. That means I’ll be flying across the country with Babby alone. AGAIN. It’ll be worth it, but oh boy, it’s going to be a long flight.

NOTE: to all of you creepy internet stalkers who think you know that my home will be empty and are already planning to break in and masturbate gloomily in the kitchen – TOO BAD! Perfect Husband will be home for the first while, and then when he leaves the house it will be guarded by robots with axes.

And they won’t be Asimov “Three Laws” robots. They’ll be, like, Chopping Mall robots.

So yeah. Watch out.

Rantings of an Ex Pat

Tags

Cape Breton, Fiddling, Nova Scotia, Olympic opening ceremonies, Vancouver

When I lived in the Caribbean, I discovered that nothing makes you cherish your heritage and your nationality like living somewhere else.  Feeling adrift among people with different sayings, different holidays, and different ways of thinking, you are made more clearly aware of what you left behind.

I have become an East Coast expat… without even leaving the country.

I am somewhat bemused by the way the Olympics have brought an eddy of interest in other parts of Canada, notably MY part of Canada. The Atlantic Canada Pavilion on Granville Island is mobbed with long lines of people who want to taste the cuisine, listen to the folk sings, have their pictures taken in front of the Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse and join the evening “kitchen party”.

Things like this remind you of what you miss…

They don’t have kitchen parties in reserved, dignified Vancouver. There aren’t jam sessions or singalongs. There may be sushi.

Perfect Husband discovered years ago, when he first moved to BC, that Vancouverites consider it to be socially acceptable to not show up to events that they have RSVPed “yes” to, often without any kind of phone call or explanation. He figured it out after multiple dinners and gatherings in which only half of the expected people actually showed up. It’s not a lack of friendliness, or a slight against the host… just a certain urban apathy which is alien to the vibrantly extroverted folks in the East. If anything, I should feel more at home here.

But I do miss the music. I spent my childhood listening to my father and my uncle pick “Mr. Sandman”, croon to “The Tennessee Waltz” and then warble about how “it coulda bin the whisky… It mighta bin the gin…” In my adult years I sat around listening to friends mournfully singing “Northwest Passage” or “Barrett’s Privateers” over their mugs of India Pale Ale, or folks trying to pick out the tune to a Fingers Eleven song on their acoustic guitars. A trip down to the pub on a Saturday night got you a free show, as a group sat in the corner with their fiddles and their Bodhran drums jamming Celtic music.

At the Olympic opening ceremonies, when they brought out that “Rhythms of Fall” tribute to the East Coast, I felt excited, and vindicated, and homesick, and… pissed off. The fiddle music sounded similar to what I had heard my father’s fiddling group play, and what you hear coming from a gazebo at Upper Clements Park on a summer’s day… but it sounded wrong.  I can’t explain this feeling, and I can’t explain what was wrong. All I know is that it wasn’t East Coast. It wasn’t bad, but it was like the Vancouver donair with the red tortilla and the lettuce. It was an approximation. The fiddlers didn’t play like Nova Scotian fiddlers. They didn’t have Cape Breton in their soul.

When they did the highland dancing… it wasn’t highland dancing. It was TAP DANCING. I’m sorry, wearing a kilt does not make you a highland dancer, and tap moves do not fit in at a ceilidh.

AND WHAT WERE THEY WEARING?

“It looks like Ashley McIsaac designed their uniforms,” I said with irritation to Perfect Husband. Nova Scotia is not particularly proud of Ashley McIsaac. At least, not after the 1999 New Years fiasco.

Towards the end of the piece, though, I was getting so frustrated with the fiddling and its poor attempt at East Coast spirit that I finally said with exasperation to my husband,

“You know, I’m actually beginning to wish Ashley McIsaac would show up, just to show these people how it’s done!”

…”Ladies and Gentlemen… ASHLEY MCISAAC!” hollered the announcer the second I finished my sentence. He showed them how it is done.

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d feel a gush of relief to see… Ashley McIsaac.

This is what expatriation does to a person.

Choice

Tags

Halifax, home, Nova Scotia, traffic, Vancouver

“I hate this city. I want to go home.”

My husband and I were walking back to our car after a very stressful evening. I had spent most of it in traffic, trying to get to a party my work was throwing for its amazing volunteers. The party had been fine, but I had spent most of it wrestling with time and distance and rush hour traffic, and the fact that this city, despite swelling to two million people, still has road systems more appropriate for Nova Scotia than for a bustling metropolis. I didn’t know shortcuts, and none of my coworkers had thought to tell me that you couldn’t go from my house, to the party site, help set up, and get back to get my husband off of the train (since we needed him to be Santa)  in the amount of time allotted. It didn’t occur to them that I wouldn’t know that, and it wasn’t their job to think of it. I missed dinner. Santa was horribly late. I was angry and miserable and full of self loathing.

“Okay,” Perfect Husband said calmly, looking at his wife who was stressed beyond belief and near tears. “If that’s how you feel. We can go home.”

I looked at him sideways. Was he calling my bluff?

“I know we can’t go home,” I muttered.

“Yes… love… we can,” he said seriously.

“How. How can we go home?” I accused.

“It’s easy.” He spoke as if to a little child. “You quit your job. I quit mine. I could request a transfer but I might not get one. We sell the townhouse. It would bring more than enough to buy a real house back home.”

The possibilities flew past my mind in an instant. Back home, with a house. Where I know every nook, cranny, and short cut. Where a 12 inch pizza isn’t called a “large” and doesn’t cost 22 dollars. Near my family. Near his family. Near our friends. White Christmases. A real house. Home.

…Quitting my job, which is my dream job. Dragging my husband from the city which he still loves. Bringing our future children into the Nova Scotia public school system. High taxes. No jobs.

“No,” I said decisively. “I’m not ready to do that. I’m not giving up yet.”

But the freedom of knowing I could took a little weight off of my shoulders. I’m not stuck here. I choose to be here.