Going Home to See Family — Mainland BC

Six years since I hugged my mom.

And when I finally did, it felt as though no time had passed at all.

It was so nice to sleep in her house, eat her homemade food, walk and talk with her. My heart filled to the brim, and somehow I felt like I was twelve years old again.

There is always so much to talk about, so much to catch up on, so many little stories that somehow never make it into telephone calls. Yet at the same time, there is no need to say anything at all.

We can just sit together.

That is the beauty of being part of a loving family.

I missed her very much.

It actually took me longer to get home than I had expected.

During our first week back in Canada, Alfonz and Daniel made their way over to the mainland, but Angelina was stuck in quarantine, so I was nominated to stay behind with her.

After ten years of living overseas, what was another week?

Well, apparently quite a lot when your mother is finally only a ferry ride away.

The next weekend opportunity was squashed when we discovered the ferries were completely booked. Apparently, we needed to reserve well in advance, something we hadn’t quite figured out yet.

Of course, we were planning everything at the last minute during those crazy first weeks back in Canada. There were a million things to organize. We were trying to get settled, figure out where everything was, reconnect with people, deal with paperwork and somehow establish a normal life again.

So, no ferry.

Instead, we went to Victoria for the day.

Not exactly the direction I wanted to go, but after being away for so many years, even Victoria felt wonderfully familiar.

Finally, our trip home fell on the August long weekend.

There was something strange about making that journey again. For years, visiting my family had required international flights, airports, passports, luggage, connections and enormous amounts of planning.

Now Mom was just across the water.

We drove onto a ferry.

That was it.

As we crossed over to the mainland, I thought about how much had happened during those six years.

Our children had grown up.

We had changed countries again.

We had built lives in France and Hungary, worked, travelled, made friends, struggled, laughed and somehow created an entire European chapter of our lives.

Meanwhile, life here had continued without us.

That is the strange thing about leaving for a long time. Somewhere in your mind, the people and places you leave behind remain exactly as you remember them.

But they don’t.

Everyone gets older.

Children grow up.

People move.

Relationships change.

Parents age.

Life doesn’t wait for you to come back.

And yet, when I finally walked through Mom’s door, none of that seemed to matter.

I knew the smells.

I knew the sounds.

I knew where everything was.

There was food waiting, because of course there was food waiting.

We walked together. We talked. We ate. We caught up on six years of life, although I’m not sure you can ever really catch up on six years.

And sometimes we didn’t talk at all.

We were simply together.

I had spent years thinking about what it would feel like to come home to Canada. I wondered whether I would still belong here after being gone so long.

Maybe I had been thinking about home all wrong.

Home wasn’t necessarily Canada.

It wasn’t British Columbia, or the mainland, or the house I was sleeping in.

For those few days, home was eating my mother’s cooking, walking beside her and talking about absolutely everything and nothing.

Six years disappeared remarkably quickly.

I wasn’t a woman who had just moved halfway around the world with a husband, two nearly grown children and ten years of stories behind her.

For a little while, I was simply someone’s daughter again.

And apparently, there are some things you never outgrow.