Day 28 St. John's

Home is a funny place. People claim it’s where the heart is. That is absolutely true, but only complicates the issue for me. The phrase implies it isn’t about a place but when you’re from Newfoundland, it just isn’t that simple! When I was first married and “left home”, there was a comfort in going back (with David, of course!) to visit Mom and Dad, to become a daughter again, to be “looked after” – spoiled and pampered, as happens when children who flee the nest come home! I referred to it as “going home”. Slowly, as the years passed, and our family grew deeper roots, leaving Mom and Dad after a vacation was “going home”. Both places had people who held a piece of my heart so, through slightly more tangled than the saying suggests, it made some sense.

As we drove into St. John’s today, to the convoluted one-way streets that snake up and down at ridiculous angles, past land marks that are as familiar as my own face, I can feel deep inside me that I have come home! We haven’t lived in this city in many, many years. I actually lived all over this island and spent scarcely more time living here than anywhere else, but this certainly feels like coming home. Apparently there is a noticeable change because David mentions in a rather hushed, reverent tone, “You’ve come home. Haven’t you?” And I really feel I have. So home is also about a place where you feel like you belong. Where you see yourself connected to the landscape and where the fabric of your life is woven from the strands you see before you. Belonging is such a powerful sense of comfort and peace.

 

Some things have changed of course, but not enough that we need a map to successfully get where we need to go. We find our way to Pippy Park, a campground that might have you believe is wilderness, but we are in the middle of the city - think parking your RV in woods behind Queen’s Park! We can see the top of Confederation Building over the top of the trees at our site! Living the backwoods life for the last month means there is a little time needed for some personal grooming and tidy before we mix once again with civilization. Hoping that applying make-up is like riding a bike and one doesn’t forget, we settle in for an afternoon and evening of cleaning, laundry and the like!

Cleaning and tidying well underway, laundry mostly sorted, we were just taking the sheets off the bed when we heard voices calling our name! Len and Sharon, our dear friends, knowing we were coming to Pippy Park today have just shown up at our door! That’s how it’s done here. People just show up and there couldn’t have been a better way to be welcomed home! We have kept in touch over the years as careers, busy lives, children and miles of separation allow, but it’s been a long time since they could just “drop by”! After a wonderful reunion where the 34 years since we’ve lived here disappeared, a plan developed that we would finish taking the sheets off the bed, pack up the laundry and go to their house to let the washer and dryer do its thing while we caught up, reminisced, shared wine and a meal and spent a perfect first evening of our two week stay here! Stuff like this only happens “at home”. I’m home!