It has been awhile since I last wrote, mostly because I am still trying to figure out what living at my mum’s house looks and feels like.  It is both easier and harder than I thought it would be to come home to live.  It is odd that this is the house that I lived in from eleven on and yet I have very little memories and connection to this place.  Sure the house holds memories but the streets and places around it are not the geography of my childhood.  That geography is scattered throughout the city and much of it can only be found as ghosts of places that once were before Vancouver became the land of glass condos, toy dogs and security.  The Vancouver of my childhood was a game of hide and seek, where the ghosts made room for me to sit and I never knew if I was seeking or hiding.  I was most comfortable with the parts of the city that looked liked the old ladies drinking brandy sitting amongst the faded brocade of the Hotel Georgia lounge.  I felt at home in the wild places of the city, where Nature had encroached and you were reminded that this place of concrete, asphalt, and steel could be brought down by one small green tendril that would lead to more and more until the walls crumble under their weight if not pulled.

Now, I am even more comfortable in the wild places and am missing the trees, streams, mountains and ocean of home.  Often when I let my mind wander through my dream home, I find that when I open the door I am no longer in the city.  Not in the middle of nowhere mind you, just a place with more wildness about it and fewer humans.  I always get the feeling that if I look hard enough in any of my dream homes there is a large population of fey.

I finally returned to therapy after a little hiatus due to a few more  crises interfering with my dealing with previous life crises. It was a good session and reassuring to hear that what I am trying to do is positive.  The trick will be not getting derailed.  At the end of the session, Donna had me imagine myself five years in the future.

I saw myself standing at a long wooden table, I could hear the slapping of the dough on the table as my hands kneaded and pulled.  Across the table someone sat, their voice simply part of the background noise as was mine but I knew that we had been laughing.  Behind me a door was open to a garden, and periodically out of the corner of my eye I could see splashes of colour darting around with the sounds of play whirling and trailing them.  I knew without seeing that in that garden was rich black soul that Ryan’s and my hands had worked.  Three trees grew, planted to honour death and life.  I let myself leave the kitchen, wandering through the house until I came to where Ryan was working. I could feel the giddiness, satisfaction and joy with what he was working on.

This place brought me so much joy, though I was surprised to find myself in the kitchen.  The last few weeks when I have been finding things a little too hard I have visited there again.  I don’t have the skill to describe it properly.  When I reread what I have written, it seems all I have done is write a cliché.  Maybe I will have to try writing about it another way but not now.

So much stuff whirls around my brain these days.  Ideas and constructs of place, identity and personal geographies add to the rhythm my steps make.  Definitions of the feminine, transformation and gender roles tease me as I witness, listen and read about the lives of other women.  Not to mention the personal challenges and growth that living under the roof of my childhood home is inciting.  None of this is bad, in fact it is all positive just a lot to negotiate with a baby and toddler in tow.