Boomerang Parent Wannabe AKA A
Bleak Start to the New Year
As soon as I get back to
Canada I drive down the highway to check on my house in Arnprior. Making sure
everything is OK takes two seconds. It is fine. Why did I think I needed to do
that? I unpack, do a load of laundry, give the whole house a good end of the
year once over, sit and eat a meal with my own lovely view in front of me
(large translucent golden ice chunks bunching up against the shore and
extending out 100s of meters looking for all the world as if the sunlight
shining on them is somehow getting trapped inside and contrasting beautifully
with the deep blue of the open water in the rest of the bay). Great. Two hours
have passed. I am bored and lonely already. I go to get a haircut, do a bit of
grocery shopping, post my Christmas blog entry, plan the summative projects my
art classes will complete in January. Five hours now. And only a week left
until I go back to work. My oldest son, Ben, is due home today too so I
boomerang back down the highway to Ottawa to see him without even having spent
a single night at home.
I text Fred when I arrive
letting him know I am in town just in case there is anything I can do for him
and he replies immediately that he would be “super down” for a games night so
my first evening back in Canada finds me hanging out with my two oldest sons,
and Laura, eating Ben’s special overloaded pizzas and then settling in to learn
and play a new card game. It turns out to be a vicious game in which you have
to choose a new enemy each round and turn your wrath on them and, despite the
combative nature of this, time passes very congenially with much reading and
re-reading of the rules (my favourite part of which states that you are out of
the game immediately after having lost all of your parts cards but, that, at
that point, you are allowed to pout) and serious strategy discussions about
whom each of us ought to choose to attack in order to have the best chance of
winning – or at least not losing. Fred wins the first game and we are all keen
to play again.
Last time I was home (by
which I mean Deep River) I admitted to a friend that, despite my best
intentions of becoming an involved member of my new community, I am failing to
do so, miserably, and, hence, am a bit more dependent on my kids, who
conveniently live close to me, to meet my weekly required social/emotional
quota than I am comfortable with. She agreed adamantly that I cannot continue
to depend on my children in this way, that they have to have their own lives
(which I know, and they do.) (But, in my defense, at the moment, fortunately,
or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, one of them has a girlfriend
who lives in the states and the other is searching for work so for very
different reasons they both have lots of time on their hands and don’t seem to
resent spending a bit of it with me.)
The next evening I am still
in Ottawa happy as a clam having slept in Ben’s spare room at night and taken
advantage of his free internet during the day (I still have no internet where I
live) when one of his friends calls in to collect him to go out for a night of
pub crawling but stops in to chat with both of us for a couple hours first. ‘Do
you live here too?’ he asks me innocently and though I protest, say no, explain
that I live in Arnprior, though the truth is that my house is not my home.
Though I might be paying rent, and utilities, I still feel that I am ‘of-no-fixed-address’.
Ben’s apartment, right downtown on Bank street, has huge sunny picture windows,
is within walking distance of countless stores and restaurants, is close to a
wide variety of cultural opportunities, and bicycle trails, and much more… the
truth is that I would love to be able to be a boomerang parent and move in with
him (don’t worry, it’s not going to happen) rather than living all on my own.
By the time I finally make it
back to my house again it is cloudy and the bay has frozen over, the view is a
pallet of steel blues, greys, and whites, and it is only a few more days until
the holiday will be over I will be able to immerse myself in my work
again.
It is a bleak start to the
New Year.
