|
|
| Musings of a meandering mind "I want a one-way ticket to Atikokan". That's what I said to the counter person at the bus station in Thunder Bay on Monday morning. I was returning to Atikokan after a weekend visit to the city, and I wondered at how strange (and final?) those words sounded, coming out of my mouth. Thunder Bay was where I had lived twenty years of my life, going from a married woman to a single parent, to an empty-nester. I own a home there, and how strange it was that others now live in it. All weekend, while I was busy seeing people and doing things, thoughts in my head kept returning to what it means to "be at home". I am no longer "at home" in Thunder Bay. I used to be able to ride my bike, bare-headed, down Memorial Avenue at rush hour. Now I look at the traffic on that street and marvel at my audacity, some would say stupidity. What I am I to make of my last year? a year that saw me pack up my life of 20 years in Thunder Bay, move to Atikokan, settle in for a good job at the Mining Attraction, and live my little life among you. What do I make of the deeply mixed emotions of this past weekend? Initially, there was the excited anticipation of the visit to the city, the first trip back since October last year. Then there was the reality of the relentless draining of my energy and emotions trying to see everyone who wanted to see me, trying to do everything that I had set for myself. Seeing my house created a gentle sadness, a remembrance of what had been and is no longer. Finally, there was the inevitable crankiness after three nights on a friend's couch. Which brought me, at the end of the visit to stand, at the bus station, saying the words "I want a one-way ticket to Atikokan". And sitting in the station, writing these words, trying to figure things out. "You can't go back" – that's what keeps bubbling up out of the soup of my confused mind right now because I don't know what the future will hold for me. But I do know that I live part of that future in Atikokan, at least until things clear up a bit. Riding the bus back, seeing the rock cuts, the white pines above the forest, the road stretching out in the distance around the bend, I knew I was going "home". As the bus came over the last rise, just before the turn off to Atikokan, I felt immeasurable relief. I'm going home. Yippeee !! I'm going home, to my tidy little house on Fotheringham, to my cat, to my little life peopled with good-hearted people I have come to know. Yes, Thunder Bay (any city, really) has the services, the flat sidewalks and good roads, the huge stores, restaurants, all of that – but I spend too much there and life is too fast there now for me. I don't have a camp on a lake, but I have lakes all over the place. Turn left or right off the highway, on my bike, and boom, there's a lake. I can paint and write, and people read what I say. That would never have happened in Thunder Bay. I am learning lessons that I couldn't learn anywhere other than Atikokan, just as my daughter is learning lessons about life in Thailand that she could learn no other place. Life stuff, not shopping stuff. And I am learning it from people like Bill Beyer, John Wiens, Ruby Chumway, Helen Haney, Mamie Faris. Ed Kryzanowski – the simple heroism of living with dignity, grace and good humour even when your body ceases to cooperate. You have to laugh at yourself and at life sometimes. You can't lose your wonder with it either, no matter where you are, or what your situation is, because it all passes and it all changes. Ruby, for example, has pixie-like, shining eyes, even though she has had a hard winter. Helen and her daughter Tammy keep a magical garden that meanders up the rocks behind their house. Bill thrives on community involvement and fishing. John shares his knowledge and passion for the mines and the pits. Mamie continues to summer at Nym Lake, doing the work that is necessary to keep her home there. Ed Kryzanowski and Elaine live lives of beauty and deep introspection. All, quiet heroes who have carved a life for themselves out of the rock and the wild. Passion, persistence, grace and good humour. Letting life take you and to be surprised by wonder, by the beauty of it all. To shake your head sometimes at the curves life throws you, and to get up the next morning and go through it all again. These are some of the lessons of living here in Atikokan. My life would have shaped up very differently over the past year, had I not moved out of Thunder Bay. And, I tend to think I might have liked it less if I had stayed there. I moved to Atikokan for one reason only – to take a job and stay employed one more year rather than to stay in Thunder Bay, unemployed, miserable and depressed. And look what happened? I like it here, and it likes me. I wondered this morning, as I drank my morning coffee, looking out at the denuded poplars on the rocks behind the houses across the street, will I be able to say one day (as I have heard quite a number of people say), "Oh, I came here, back in 2000, for a job, and here it is twenty years later, and I never left". |