Wherever you go, there you are

Last night's Thanksgiving was nice -- as nice as can be expected. There were fourteen people including small children, all three of whom were running about like lunatics. My child still gets along better with his six year old cousin than the one nine months his junior, so there were some interesting moments. My sister, to whom I regaled my news over the phone on Saturday, was her usual pleasant self, alongside her Stepford-like husband, who only has ever shown a single emotion of calm pleasantries in the almost 15 years I've known him. My mother ran about trying to make everyone have a wonderful time, and my father only had one serious moment of temper, so all in all it went fairly well.

You know, as it always does. Fairly good, with moments of tension and boredom. Always the same. One day I'll miss it terribly, I know, and look back at these meals with a great deal of nostalgia.

* * * * * * *

My mother's mother was the last of nine children and lived in a medium sized three storey house which by the time she passed away had accumulated seven siblings worth of life detritus. Only two other of her siblings had children, so she had a HUGE amount of stuff. It took my mother over a year to clean out the house. Granted we found a large number of very interesting items, such as a World War One soldier's helmet, bayonet, and medals (no idea who they belonged to; not a single person in the family we are aware of fought in World War One); several shotguns and handguns, one with bullets (no one we know of ever owned guns or had any use for them); my grandfather's navy uniforms as well as his wallet that was still in the top drawer of her bureau, unchanged from when he had died 25 years earlier; fur coats and other fashions from the 1920s; a ham radio from the 1950s; and the letters that I wrote to her, faithfully once a week, while I lived overseas in university. Those were the one thing that made me cry.

My mother, bless her, is very conscious of what a hard job that was, and so she has been trying to, very slowly, move through the contents of her own family home with its years of detritus (much of which was inherited from said other home), and clean out things she doesn't want or need. One of the things that was kept from years gone by were my grandfather's -- father's father, this time -- collection of slides. And I'm talking thousands of them. Many of them from the wonderful trips he and my grandmother took post-retirement and pre-grandchildren, after which they were a little too old to be gallivanting off to India. So many years have gone by that we no longer know where the pictures are taken, and really have no need for almost 40 year old photos of random scenes from China, so those are being thrown out. But we're keeping the ones of my parents as a young couple, in front of the house they bought in 1969, the one in which they still live. The ones of me as a baby; the ones of our family at Christmas 1982. The ones of my uncles as young men, toasting together over a nice pub meal. They brought a selection of them to dinner last night, and marvelled at the photos of my parents in the same stage of life we are now -- parents to a single child. A pregnant mom looking over her older child. A new baby. Young, dark haired, thinner.

And happy. My parents looking genuinely excited to see each other and be with each other, instead of merely content as they are now. I don't remember that. I don't remember my parents being actively in love with each other. Oh, it's been over forty years, I don't think they are unhappy. But they had two children and two careers and they were busy, and they didn't get excited about each other any more. I understand why, and I can see it in my own relationship. I don't even think it's bad, per se. You can't be excited about someone else every single second. You'd be exhausted.

But I don't really want to lose that either.

* * * * * * *

I was in the bookstore near work the other day at lunch time, and there was a new book showcased about the end of globalization. It seems his hypothesis is that cheap oil is the reason why travel of people and goods has been so cheap -- why we can have strawberries in any month of the year, because even if they aren't being grown in local fields, someone in Chile is growing them and we can have them in a jiffy, for merely the cost of a flight. And clearly someone is buying them, because it's worthwhile to bring them that far, even if they do taste like straw.

Travel is the same -- we can get anywhere in the world for cheaper than it ever has been because oil is still cheap and plentiful.

But that's all about to change, he suggests -- meaning we won't be able to move either people or goods about the planet nearly so cheaply. This saddens me greatly -- not because of the strawberries, because I never buy them when they come from Chile. Not because they cost twice as much (although that's an obvious deterrent) but because they are revolting and flavourless. But it may mean that my ambition of travelling to new countries and taking my child -- or children -- may be thwarted. I remember days travelling with my parents as some of the best of my young life. I'd like to be able to give that to my children.

* * * * * * *

Many years ago I purchased a book of questions -- by someone named Gregory, I think. The type of thing that had all kinds of various questions like "If you are hiking with your father and your best friend and they both get bitten by a poisonous snake, and you only have a single dose of anti-venom, and no time to get more, to whom is it administered?" or "Would you rather have a life full of exhilarating highs and devastating lows, or a relatively calm stable life throughout?"

One of the questions I remember was "Would you rather leave the country of your birth, never to return, or never again leave the province in which you now live?"

As a younger person, I would always answer the former. Heavens! Miss out on the wonders of the world? Never!

And now I think -- I'm never going to be rich. Travel might not be a big option in my future life. And while I like being close to my family, the fact is that I spent my twenties wandering about and trying new places only to finally figure out that I am, in fact, a west-coast Canadian. This place is part of who I am, and I could no more leave it forever than I could remove part of my personality.

I'm not saying that I will necessarily live in Vancouver for the rest of my life; moving to another part of Canada is still an option that we consider, mostly due to the cost of living. But in the end, I know who I am, and there's a deep seated part of me that will always feel at home in the temperate west-coast climate near the sea.

* * * * * * *

In the end, the fact is that our world may become physically smaller, and my family might drive me crazy, and this town is too expensive, but they are all part of who I am, for better or for worse. I can see my parents as young people, in love; I can see who they are now, loving and cranky, caring and tactless. I can see my partner for who he is and be genuinely excited about being in his life and seeing where it leads us both, where my life path leads us both. It doesn't really matter. In the end I know where I came from, and while I don't know where I'm going, all these things will still be the same. The crazy family with a long past. The place, the ocean, the partner, the child. The constants. The world will revolve and change, but the constants will remain the same, and they are really the only important things.

And strawberries imported from Chile in February will always taste horrible.