Chapter 44: Homecoming

There is nothing like traveling alone in an airport to make you homesick for a place you don’t even know. At LAX, on my way to Vancouver, seated out in a smokers’ courtyard, the smell of airplane diesel in the warm air of this golden afternoon, with its blood-red sun hanging low over the Pacific. All these people milling about here in LAX, and just outside these walls another 10 million or more. So many lives which which might have been mine – except for the curious (and if you think about it rather inexplicable) twist of fate that they’re not. How exactly did it happen that I have this life, and not one of theirs?

And then, home in Vancouver. A strange nostalgic twisting of the heart that is bitter-sweet. Peace, seasoned with a dollop of psychic displacement, every street corner inhabited by ghosts. Arriving after midnight, the taxi driven by a friendly Sikh murmuring on his cellphone, the car gliding quietly through the dark streets. I can see the lights on the top of Grouse Mountain, where I used to ski in another lifetime, when I was 18. The lights hang suspended in the dark sky like a fairy castle. I ring sweet Lance, in Sydney, on the other side of the world, because I feel weepy. He laughs gently and tells me I’m just jet lagged. He’s both right and wrong at the same time.

I am heading home through the dark streets to mum (her name is Inge), her partner Hugh and the dog Obi. Coming over Lions Gate Bridge - the most beautiful bridge in the world - a big dog has just been killed in the road. I see a great red raw patch in the huge mess of dark fir slumped by the curb, and then the taxi goes over it with a thud-crunch. “Oh” I say, but my driver doesn’t even seem to notice.

When I get out at my mum’s little house in Norgate the air smells so unbelievably clean, that I just stand in the street for a moment, sniffing the pine and cedar and fir. The house is both changed and unchanged, like I’ve stepped into a proximate parallel universe. A new kitchen of dark wood, and the evergreen hedge out back and the rundown house next door both gone forever. But the old photos still up, and the same dog and cat twining through my legs. Clothes of mine, in the drawer and in the cupboard. And of course Mum staying up to 2am with me, drinking tea and holding hands. She is so sleepy she can’t talk, but she doesn’t want to go to bed.

The next day, the sense of being caught in a psychic timewarp intensifies. At Park Royal mall, a pastry and coffee shop named Rene’s remains utterly unchanged. I am convinced it is the same 6 old ladies in pastel-coloured tracksuits, taking a coffee and scone there, as seemed to permanently inhabit the place when I was in high school, coming up on 30 years ago! And at the gym, the corporate colour theme of red and black (outfits for the staff, neon signs everywhere) takes me ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMIIIIIINNGG back to the 1980s. Not to mention the 80s music the gym plays: Images in Vogue, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Duran Duran, and other groups, whose names I can’t recall for the life of me, but whose songs I know, word for word from beginning to end. It’s really kind of unnerving. What are they trying to do to me? Kill me with a fatal overdose of nostalgia?

The next night at BBQ dinner with my brother my mum brings out a photo of my father – the first image of him I’ve beheld in a long, long, long time – and we try to remember what year it was, exactly, when he last looked so good. He died on 2 January, 1999. So many memories pressing in, like the weight of water. Last year, when I was here, my partner Max and I had just split up, and those memories also come flooding back over me, like a great tide. A phone call to my best friend Ruth finds her on a family vacation in Disneyland “seeking refuge in the crapper, with a beer”. I understand why she seeks refuge. She sends me this email dispatch from the front lines of Disneyland:

The only gay men I've seen have been dressed up as female cartoon characters. Kind of a sad way for a man to get his girlie on...The few thin people we see kind of wave meekly at each other in a gesture of solidarity and commiseration. All efforts are made to not stare at the fat people as they sheepishly slurp on their tub o'cokes.

My God she makes me laugh. I haven’t seen her in a year. I haven’t seen my brother in a year either, or my mom. A year has passed, and yet it seems like yesterday. Where did my year go? I am turning 42 in a few weeks. How on earth did that happen? I simply cannot believe it. I have a sense of a life unmoored, but I have no idea if it is mine or not.

So here is what home is like: Birds at the feeder. Blueberries in the garden, the laden branches nearly sweeping the green grass. Hugh snoring in his chair; we await his 90th birthday on Saturday. There is to be a heatwave of record temperatures as well. Frequent cups of tea. A crow, cawing for something, somewhere. A seaplane, low overhead, aiming for Coal Harbour. My discarded socks baking in the sun on the grey wooden deck. The dog jumping with excitement at the merest hint of attention, leaving a spray of golden urine on the floor, every time. A steak sandwich with mayo, such as only a mother can make. A wind chime stirs somewhere unseen. Dinner with my friends Joss, Mark, Ryan, and Mark, and coffee with my oldest friend in the world (since age 4) Kerry. Her hair is all grey now, and her children are nearly adults.

Me, sleeping at night, the dog under one arm, my grey cat under the other. Fresh strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, bought from the roadside stand by the native reservation. A companionable movie with my brother; we don't talk to each other all year, and then with no effort tap into this deep easy love and respect for each other. A fan, gently blowing the warm air over me as I write this. A sense that I could belong here again, maybe. But then again, maybe not. I just don't know. My heart nearly breaking when Mum says she expects to be lonely in her old age. I don’t know what to say. I hope it’s not so, but to be honest I expect the same thing for myself.

Who has seen the final season of Six Feet Under? I saw it just before leaving Sydney and it blew me away, it is so damn profound. Says Brenda, more or less, “I used to think that as I got older I’d be surrounded by more people, but it isn’t like that at all. Instead, you get so honed and sharpened by your experiences, that in the end there isn’t anyone left who gets you.”

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Big love to you all.