Off To Canada

Tonight we leave for our week-long Canadian holiday with Karina's family in Saskatchewan. Its been nearly a year and a half since we have been home and we are both excited to go enjoy the familiarity of Springside (who by the way is celebrating their 125th). This trip is especially poignant for Karina as this will be her last visit to her childhood home as her parents home...a place that she considers to be one of those sacred sites of memory and formation. This summer they are in the process of building a new home some 15 miles away and will relocate before our trip home for Christmas. While this is exciting, for her and likely for her siblings, this is no doubt the cause of mixed emotions and floods of memories of their lives lived together in this place. It has been good cause for me to reflect upon my own homes, the liminal transitions of moving, and the processes of packing and unpacking.

On occassion I remind myself of the homes, doing a mental walk-through the rooms, trying to remember where furniture pieces sat, people who sat in them, and the conversations and events that transpired there. Perhaps I am simply sentimental, but it is good for me to recall the formative events of my life in terms of place as it is helpful to rightly appreciate my current place and its significance.

My hope for the family and their visit is that they will allow themselves the space to practice the memories of this cherished farm, gardens, fields.