Twenty-five years ago, we sent off a moving van full of furniture and treasured possessions, and finished cleaning the Baptist manse in Paris (Ontario). We realized that all of the things we had set aside to transport ourselves in our Ford Tempo were definitely not going to fit in the car if we hoped to be in the car as well. So we drove to several Canadian Tires in neighbouring towns in search of a rooftop carrier. We finally found an unassembled carrier, which we struggled to put together in the parking lot, right in front of one of those signs you’ve all seen informing consumers that they are not permitted to use the parking lots to assemble things that have been bought at the store. I’m pretty sure we had no other option... how on earth does one transport an unassembled car top carrier if not on top of the car?
We finished packing up, and spent the night with friends in Paris who were imminently expecting their second child. While we were eating supper, I noticed that she was grimacing, and I said, "You're in labour, aren't you?" She assured me she was okay, but halfway through the night, she and her husband left for the hospital. At some point during the night, their son was born. We stopped for a visit on our way out of town, and spent the next night with our adopted family on their farm in Mountsberg.
The next day we travelled to Ottawa, where we crashed at my brother's apartment. While he was at work, my husband fell asleep in the bedroom, and our 3-year-old son and I fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. We must have been exhausted, because when my brother arrived some several hours later, he walked in to an apartment of sleeping people absolutely covered in concrete dust. We had left the balcony doors open to try to get some air circulating (because it was Ottawa and it was hot). We had all slept through workers jackhammering the concrete balcony above his apartment, and the dust billowed in.
After we left Ottawa, with our Tempo so loaded down with plants and other items that our son had to crawl through the front seat to get into his car seat, we drove through the night, until we got a flat tire between Edmundston and Grand Falls at about 5 a.m. We had to unpack our entire trunk at the side of the road in order to get to the donut tire, then repack it and continue on to Grand Falls. We found a garage, which didn’t open until 6, so we waited around, unpacking the trunk yet again to get out the damaged tire, only to be to be told that they could not repair the tire, and we would have to purchase a new one. Unfortunately, they did not have the tire we needed, so they advised us to go to the local Canadian Tire.
We finally found the tire we needed. After, you guessed it, unpacking our previously carefully packed trunk yet again to put the donut tire back in its space, we were on our way, arriving at our new home in Sackville later that day. The adventures continued; we became first-time home owners, the basement in our 4-year-old house started to collapse and had to be replaced (that’s another story for another day), and we eventually had another baby.
Twenty-five years.... a lifetime for our kids, and a very long time in any circumstance. I moved around so much when I was a child that I always told my husband that I could live anywhere, as long as it wasn’t forever. This starts to feel a lot like “forever.” Some days, that’s a good thing.
How does one reflect meaningfully on twenty-five years of life in the same place? When we arrived here, we were a young, growing family, and we figured we would be here for 3-4 years max. Now we are heading towards retirement and the so-called “sunset years.” Our kids have grown up here, and so have we. My husband has had an extremely challenging and rewarding career. We live in the same house we originally bought, warts and all (although it has a new-er basement). We have experienced birth and death in this place, joy and anger, frustration and satisfaction, belonging and betrayal. We have lived our lives here, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer and, definitely after our basement incident, for poorer. I think we mostly feel that we belong here, that we have a place in the community. Many happy memories have been made in this home and this community, with all kinds of people. We have created a home where I hope everyone feels that they have a place and where they won’t be turned away.
I do not know what the next few years hold for us, whether we will choose to stay here or go off in search of different adventures. But for now, this is home sweet home.
