Roots

Every day Facebook fills up with statuses like this: "I can't wait to get out of this town."  "If I have to spend another year in this town, I swear I'll die."  

    I bought a hamburger from a former student of mine today.  "Two more weeks.  Two more weeks," he told me.  Because then he's going to move from his town to a city.  And everything will be better.

    But slipping by, almost unnoticed are Facebook statuses which seem like bookends to those: "I don't know what I was doing, moving here.  Can't wait to get back home where I belong."  "So glad to be back in my hometown!"

    My friend, growing up, kept planning big.  To move to America.  To move Out West, as one does, in Canada.  And my sister had that bug too.  She moved to Japan for a couple of years.  Moved to the west coast once she got married.  She came right back, never having really been able to put roots down there like she can here.  My friend moved out west, reinvented himself rather extensively, and did not.

   I never understood that need to leave.  I grew up living in the farm country (with trees and rivers and lakes and stars and wildlife and things) right outside a town, which had almost everything you'd need, with a city less than an hour's drive away, for things like NHL teams, multiplexes, clubs, big box stores and concerts.  And that's what seems normal to me.  When I was at university, I lived right in a city.  Couldn't get anywhere where there was real nature.  Could go look down at a river from the back of Parliament Hill.  So I did that sometimes.  But I can't really think at all in a city. 

   When I was moving out from my parents' after University, I didn't want to move out and get a place in exactly the same town my parents lived outside of, where I'd grown up (that seemed a bit pointless), but I moved to another bit of countryside just outside a near, smaller village, but a bit closer to the city.  And when I moved next, I moved into the city, but on the edge of it.  And when I really needed to think, I walked out of the city, into farm country.  Almost stepped on a porcupine in the thick darkness one time, on a nature trail, trying to work out my thoughts and feelings about a girl who didn't care enough, as one does.  And when I was at my folks', I often made a point to take walks in the night.

    And then I moved into a small town I could walk out of, into farm country, with stars and moon and forest and cows and things.  And that worked, too.  It's quite close to the city, but you can't tell if you're here.

    I'm into roots. I teach kids, and having connections to the parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents of an assortment of them (even being distantly related to a few of them) makes me feel like I'm a local, who knows stuff, and who can handle things.  No one ever feels like he knows exactly how much stuff and exactly how many people I might end up knowing something about, or having a connection to.  It's magic.

    And the roots can go pretty far.  A number of cities in both Canada and the U.S. have places that I've been, or lived, or visited so many times, that they are "my" places.  I have favourite restaurants, clubs and convenience stores and movie theatres in Toronto, Montreal and towns in Pennsylvania and New York state.  And I like that.