Where is home? When you’ve lived in another country for more than 20 years, coming home to Canada is like immigrating all over again. You arrive in a place that feels alien. It didn’t feel like that on previous visits.
Those were holidays. Those visits felt like homecomings. In 2022, I returned for good.
It should have felt like a homecoming, but it didn’t. It had shadows. The sky and the air felt different.
The trees loomed. Even the buttercups seemed sinister. The clouds were filled with tears.
I rationalized that the circumstances of my return, a major loss, a change in my status, coloured my perceptions. That was partly true. What was the rest of the truth? Coquitlam and then Port Coquitlam, where I eventually settled, were beautiful, fairy-tale places.
There were woods and walking trails, around a bend a host of buttercups, foxgloves, dandelions and rhododendrons could be seen in unusual places. The most amazing part of it all — there was a river! It was unreal. I should have been enchanted and delighted.
Instead, I was uneasy. I was gliding in a dream with a nightmare hovering at the edge. I had to ask where things were.
Whom to approach for various other things. I knew the vocabulary, but it was as if I’d forgotten the language. For two decades I had lived on a desert island.
That had been home. It was my comfort zone. Despite the searing heat — easily handled with air-conditioning.
Winter? That was the best time of the year. More, I knew where, when and ho.
