My father was born in a small town in central Illinois that hasn't changed much since his birth. My mother was born in a slightly larger town, now part of a large city, in northwestern Ontario. They met in graduate school. They got married and had five children, of which I'm the younger daughter. My mother became a U.S. citizen before I was born. So technically, I'm all-American, apple pie, baseball and yadda yadda. After all, I was born to two U.S. citizens.But my heart has always belonged in Canada--more specifically, to a few acres of real estate about 15 miles outside what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Superior. Here, the family has two cottages, or "camps" in Northwestern Ontario-speak, that date back to my mother's childhood in the 1920s. My partner lives in a lovely home between them, on property that originally belonged to the family but which my mother sold in the 1980s, in part to finance the addition of plumbing to one of the camps. Currently, we split our time between his house and my apartment in town, though summer finds us mostly at the lake.
When we were children, we came to these camps every summer. My mother needed to be here, partly to escape the heat of her Oklahoma home, but also because being here refreshed her. The icy water and whispering birches spoke to her spirit, as did the mundane challenges of primitive living. On a wood-burning stove, she whipped out dazzling meals; she painted inside and outside walls, hauled water, and chopped wood with the rest of us.
Through the years, I came to share her need to be here, but my life's path continued to wind through the U.S. Finally, in midlife, I arrived, suitcase in hand, to stay. I belong here.
Moving anywhere is painful--leaving behind the familiar, even for new, exciting opportunities, means saying goodbye to part of one's life. Moving to a foreign country, no matter how similar the cultures, has its own challenges. I often wonder if the similarities make the differences even more acute. And then I start to wonder how similar our cultures are, anyway.
There you have it: a bit of who I am, and a bit of what I contemplate.
