Home Sweet Home

There was always something calling me to keep travelling, to keep moving; the nomadic lifestyle appealed more than a sedentary one. That’s why all my paycheques went toward holidays or longer-term travels, and why I spent most of 2010, 2011, and 2012 on the road, with barely any breaks.

But then something changed. And although I’ve been realising the change for the last year, as I watched London go by from the cab window yesterday it all was achingly clear: I’m not ready to leave this place. I really like this place. I think that, for all of the wanderlust still in my bones, I want to settle in this place. Permanently.

How quickly a place can feel like a home. I’ve been thinking about that a lot these days, especially as I’ve now lived in London for nine months, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I remember, years ago, reading the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers while lying under a mosquito net in Thailand; in it, Zeitoun speaks of his travelling past, and that he knew he’d always settle down somewhere if he either found a woman he loved or a port that he loved. While I won’t speak on the former at the moment, I can certainly speak for the latter. I love London.

Photos of one of my favourite cities in the world. And how could it not be one of my favourites, with bangers and mash, graffiti proposals, and snow globes the size of a house?

It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to post about Thanksgiving every year; I think it’s incredibly important to give thanks. I try to do it daily, but on a day where Canadians are actually given a day off to be thankful, I try to really evaluate all of the positives (and sometimes the negatives, I have been thankful for them, too) in my life.

12 years ago, I was getting ready to start another day at high school; it was my first week of being in Grade 12, my first week as a prefect. It was picture day, so I had woken up early to spend a bit more time on my hair and makeup, make sure my shirt and blazer were ironed properly. I was in the kitchen when my dad called from work.

“Something happened in New York, ” he said. My mum and brother were there, too, so the three of us huddled around the TV and watched with horror as the towers burned. My hometown is an hour behind New York, and so we had been sitting there, eating cereal, chatting about the upcoming day, without knowing what had happened, without knowing that the world was falling apart.

My ears perked up. “Winnipeg”, I had heard the girl say, I was sure of it. I had a fleeting sensation of excitement, of hearing the name of my hometown dropped casually into conversation, and I briefly wondered why she was mentioning it at all. This entire process took about 1.5 seconds in my brain, before I once again stopped myself, rolled my eyes.

“I’m in Winnipeg, you idiot,” I thought to myself. I had been for a month.