I just got back from a visit home, and I feel wistful. There’s no place like home.
I come from Nova Scotia, on Canada’s Atlantic coast, and now I live in Vancouver, on the edge of the Pacific. That’s a lot of land between myself and my family.
I came out here for the jobs, really. There’s work here, and good pay, and I have friends out here, and the city is lovely, really.
But boy, I wish that I were closer to home.
It was wonderful having my parents and my in-laws fawn over Babby. My mother would watch the baby so I could go out with old friends. My mother in law made ginger bread cookies and blueberry pie and a full turkey dinner and kept prodding us to eat more, more!
There’s a feeling of coziness, returning to the Maritimes where my family and my friends are everywhere, and everyone seems to know everybody.
On the other hand, Vancouver is very metropolitan and international, and it is beautiful. We have lovely cherry blossoms in spring, snow on the mountains, and a sushi restaurant on every corner. In some parts of the city, Caucasians are in the minority, and business signs don’t even bother using English.
But it isn’t… personal.
It’s rare to run into someone you know in a city as sprawling as Vancouver. You don’t make conversation with people on the street, unless it’s about hockey.
But, in Nova Scotia, things are different. The entire province has less than a million people; whereas, metro Vancouver has over 2 million inhabitants.
Yeah.
So, even in Halifax, with a population of 370,000, you are likely to run into someone you know. If you are outside of the big city, you’re pretty much guaranteed to run into someone you know.
I went down to the local pub to wait for a friend, and the waitress guessed who I must be waiting for. The next time I went, there was another waitress. She went to school with me.
At my in-law’s house we went wandering down to the wharf and a lobster fisherman drove up, concerned about the strangers near his stock. He recognized my husband, who hasn’t lived at home since the 1990s, and insisted on giving us a guided tour of his new lobster tank. (Lobster is everywhere in Nova Scotia, by the way. Looking for a McLobster? Look no further!)
In Nova Scotia, old ladies accost you in doughnut shops and tell you their husbands’ life history, just because your baby is cute.
Nova Scotia is a place where you see signs that congratulate “Bernice” for winning “Choice Hotel’s Woman of the Year Award.” Just “Bernice”. No last name. Who needs them?
I love it. I love all of it.
I especially love being with my family again.
If I lived closer to home, my mother could take care of my son every day while I worked, and I wouldn’t be looking for daycare right now.
But if I lived in Nova Scotia, I wouldn’t need my mother to take care of my son, because I probably wouldn’t be able to find a job at all.
You see the irony.
We seriously need a teleport machine invented pronto.
Do you live far from where you want to be? Do you wish you were closer to your family?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Carol from If By Yes of Vancouver, Canada. She can be found writing at her blog, If By Yes.
Photo credits to the author.
Oh man, I so much can relate to this. Even though I stay just over 300 miles from where I come from, I am just a few hours car drive from my family, I still miss ‘my’ place. I can so much relate to every single sentence you have written. I understand now, I have to be here and its slowly becoming a home and I am growing to like this place. But boy, I lived ‘there’ for 25 years. I know what its like.
Oh, but life takes you where you have to go and it grows on you. You create new roots and new family and new friends and the old family still are very much part of you. Hopefully you visit them often and your baby gets the good of both the worlds 🙂
Thank you, I hope that is just what happens! We’re definitely putting down roots, but I don’t know if this will ever really be “home” for me!
Carol,
I love the line about Beatrice winning, just Beatrice.
My husband and I will never be able to live by both our families because they’re in different countries, but we now live closer to my family in New Jersey. We were in a similar situation when our daughter was first born, as we lived about a 3 and 1/2 hr drive from my parents.
We made the move, but we had to give some things up — like a shorter commute for my husband.
I hope you find your lobster slippers!
Jen 🙂
Ooh, that’s tough. At least my husband’s family lives only an hour away from mine, so we can get all the relative-visiting out of our systems in one go.
Carol, I can relate to this. I relocated from Johannesburg, South Africa to Toronto almost 11 years ago, and it’s HARD! My son’s autism makes air travel very difficult, so I haven’t been able to go back there for almost seven years. I’m happy with my life here, and I’m glad I made the move, but sometimes I do wish I was closer to the land of my birth.
Kirsten
It’s quite a flight from TO to Johannesburg. I can only imagine trying to do it with an autistic child. I hope your friends and family make it out to see you occasionally!
Two awesome places Carol! I love Vancouver and Nova Scotia is just lovely, nothing like race week in Chester. Even though everybody knew one another and had deep roots, they also welcomed me very warmly despite being a transient stranger. I can feel what you are missing.
I miss being near our families, too, especially now w/ kids. I want them to know the intimacy of family but at the same time my husband and I know that living globally is not something we can easily give up, at least not right now, and so we live w/ the trade-offs. We try to make up for it by planning as many family trips as we can and cherish the time when we’re together.
I know what you mean. I have such mixed feelings because while I want my son to be near his family, I also want him to grow up in various places. I’ve met people who lived in one place their whole lives and… I don’t know, somehow their outlook on life is just different. I want Babby to have the open-mindedness of having lived in different places.
I just need those magic slippers!
We are in an opposite situation in some respects. We live very, very close to our families, but it is in a city and state which we (and especially I) despise. The whole reason we moved here was because we wanted kids and wanted them to be close to grandparents. But that whole process took so long that I can barely stand living here, and now I would hate to deprive anyone of this much desired impending baby. Sigh. Nobody has perfection.
No, I think that’s very true. Maybe you could just move a WEE bit away?
Nova Scotia sounds a lot like New Zealand, Carol. And I completely understand that you miss having your families around – there is a lot of land between you and them. Economics suck really. You could say bugger the bills and live in a tent, but I suspect that might get a little cold in the winter! 🙂
Stupid economics!
My husband’s in the military. I totally get it. We’re a sixteen-hour drive from all our friends and family, and we’re probably only going to keep getting farther away on the next posting. It’s hard.
I grew up visiting my grandparents at LEAST once a month, but more often bi-weekly. My sister’s kids were babysat by my mom, too, until they were three or four years old and wanted to go to daycare. They also spent weekends and even weeks at my parents’ place in the summer in the elementary school years. My kids only get to see their grandparents twice a year, if they’re lucky. I hate, hate, hate that! But, like you, we had to move to go where the work was…
Oh, well. At lest we can visit and try to expose them to the culture as much as we can, right?
Definitely. I grew up a long way away from my family and while that sucked in some ways, I had immense benefits from travelling to new places and moving. I’ve found that people who lived in the same place their whole lives seem to think differently about things… like their way is The Way. Whereas people who moved around as kids understand that ways vary from place to place.
That must be so hard! My parents live near us, and I can’t imagine not having them close by. It must be frustrating to have that practical reality be part of what dictates where you live, even if you love it there.
I love your description of Nova Scotia – I’ve never been but have always wanted to go. More so now!
I love it. You should definitely visit! Especially when the Tall Ships are in Halifax.
Thank you for sharing your story. I relate to it so much. I grew up in Pennsylvania (around which the majority of my friends and family live) but now live just outside of Seatte (for my husband’s work). I described my first few years here to a friend as if I was walking through a dream, because there was no nostalgia for me…anywhere. I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew, I didn’t have any memories associated with anything, and anyone I did spend time with would have no connection with my backstory or where I came from. The good thing is that so many people in the Seattle area came here from somewhere else, so everyone is friendly and inclusive. Plus, looking back, it was a special time for my husband and me…just the two of us, making a new life. But I have always said if I had a teleport machine and I would be perfectly content!
Seattle is a great city – I’ve visited many times from Vancouver. But it sure is a long way from Pennsylvania.
It feels good when you finally start to put down roots, doesn’t it? But then it makes you feel so mixed in your feelings, because when you think about going back, you start thinking about the people you’ll be leaving behind…