No hometown

Let me tell you a story about my hometown.

I don’t have one.

There’s more to it than that, so please, read on.

I feel this story is the most important part of my development as a human being. I know for sure that my parents would wish otherwise. They would hope that their own difficult decisions had not affected me so much. But they did, and we can’t go back and change them anymore.

I want them to know I am a better person because of it.

When I was six days old, I moved from Moncton, New Brunswick to Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. My father had already been in Shubenacadie starting at his new job for a major bank, still getting his feet wet in a career that was only a few years old to him.

Mom worried she would have to drive herself to the hospital when she went into labour with me, and my sister who was four-years-old at the time would have to stay beside her in the delivery room.

Thank goodness Dad was home for a weekend when Mom finally started having contractions in the middle of a July heat wave. My sister may have started our relationship off with some traumatizing memories, to say the least.

That move to Shubenacadie was followed by a move back to New Brunswick, and then back to Nova Scotia – all by the time I was four.

My memories stretch far back, farther than you could ever think were possible. I believe it’s because I moved every three years or so, so my memories are divided nicely in a little graph in my head with the towns, and dates I lived there, listed in a neat column. In my mind, it’s even colour coded by province.

I remember the “breaking of the news” the most.

Dad always said it. Mom was too sad. She didn’t want to upset her two daughters. It was never a shock to us though, because Dad had become an expert at preparing us with fun facts about the town he was considering accepting a job in.

“My colleague told me they have a great swim team Molly. Sometimes in the summer they even practice in the lake,” he said when I was seven.

A few months later I was saying goodbye to my friends and moving to the town of Yarmouth, which we called “the town at the end of the world.”

We never practiced in the lake.

But even as a little girl, I was never too traumatized from the moving. I understood, even then, that it was the best for my family. I felt lucky to have such adventurous parents who were willing to pack up everything just to give their daughters the best life possible.

Sure I shed some tears, and even kicked and screamed at times, but I had already learned to accept moving as a part of who I was as a person.

I was proud of my mom especially. She always stayed behind as my dad moved early to start his new job. She showed the house to prospective buyers and made sure we didn’t leave anything behind. She kept me company for the first few weeks in our new town when I hadn’t made any new friends yet.

Today, when someone asks me where I’m from, I have to giggle a little bit.

“I’m not sure,” I respond to a quizzical look. “I’ve moved a lot.”

“Well where were you born?” responds the person, who clearly wasn’t prepared to have this complicated of a conversation because of one tiny ice breaker of a question.

“I moved when I was six days old, so that place doesn’t really count, I don’t think,” I say.

It’s usually left at that.
When I was a child, I loved to read.  I was drawn to books about girls who had friends that lived next door, friends they had known since they were born because their mothers took the same pre-natal aerobics class together, or maybe their Dads grew up together too. That’s why I clung to my friends, whether they were good or bad for me, even up until now.

I can remember the exact time I met my best friend from high school. I know how many years it’s been. I want her to be my bridesmaid. I’m always the one who calls her.

Having a friend for four years or more is the equivalent of an Olympic gold medal to me.

My sister and I are close and we know exactly why. Despite our five-year age gap, we are the only people we have known since birth, and remained close with. We fight like cats and dogs, but I always say that the only person you would dare fight that hard with is someone you really care about.

I thought when coming to university in a town I had never lived in before, I was choosing my hometown. Somewhere I could forge a strong connection, both to the place and to the people. When I had been away for a while, I wanted to feel warmth in my heart when I drove down the highway towards Fredericton and saw the city’s lights.

But at the age of twenty-one, and facing graduation, I was ready to admit I was still searching for my home.

One month ago, my father called me on a Saturday morning when I had just returned from the market. The Boyce Farmer’s Market is a favourite place for my parents to go when they visit me at school in Fredericton.

“We have some news,” my father said.

“We’re moving?” I guessed, like a professional. Or perhaps a kid who had memorized the sound of her father’s slightly nervous voice when he had some big news.

“Well we are, you’re not,” Dad said, and I laughed because after four years away at university and not one summer spent back in my parent’s house, I still considered myself a part of their unit.

“We’re moving to Fredericton,” Dad said, and his previous comment made even more sense.

I had no idea what to feel. I immediately felt like calling my sister. We are the only two people in the entire world who can exactly understand what the other would be feeling.

The news that my parents were moving was automatically supposed to mean sadness. It meant the departure of comfort and routine, the separation of good friends, and one more notch on my list of towns lived.

But then the positive emotions started coming. My parents were moving – to be near me! I would have a home base in a city that I believed was great, or I wouldn’t have spent the last four years of my life studying in it.

And now most of all, when people ask me that dreaded question – Where are you from?

I feel like maybe now I can give them an answer.

Short URL: http://www.newbrunswickbeacon.ca/?p=6122

Posted by Molly Cormier on Apr 18, 2010. Filed under Opinion, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.